Followers (by Megan Angelo) plus bonus

I read This Is How You Lose the Time War last year, and realized I completely forgot to blog it or put it on my list, so here it is now: this sci-fi novella by Amal-El Mohtar and Max Gladstone is an amazing, strange, beautiful, romantic story about warring time travelers. It's strange but great.

And Followers is also strange and great; speculative fiction featuring storylines from 2016 and 2051 that ultimately intersect. It's funny and wise about the ways in which technology controls our lives and relationships. I'm not sure how I feel about the ending but I keep turning it over in my mind

I may as well also toss in here that I started Oval for the Tournament of Books, a speculative fiction novel that did not compel me, so I gave it up. It's in the play-in against two books I liked better, so I feel good about my choices there.

Cleveland Reads

Time for another roundup of things I read on a trip, this time during a long weekend in Cleveland.

Sleeping Murder (by Agatha Christie)

This was for the "last book in a series" category of the Read Harder Challenge.  I vastly prefer Poirot to Miss Marple, so I haven't read many of these, but I enjoyed the young couple at the center of the mystery, who were amateur detectives in this case. Also, the ending fooled me, and I love being fooled! (Note, this is Agatha Christie, so there is some casual racism. Sadface emoji.)

Ash (by Malinda Lo)

This was for the "retelling of a fairytale by an author of color" category of the RHC.  It's a retelling of Cinderella where the main character falls in love, not with the handsome prince, but with the beautiful huntress - and the "fairy godmother" is kind of a semi-malevolent fairy spirit. It was published over a decade ago, and it was interesting to read the interview with Lo where she said she regrets not adding more Chinese influences, but at the time she thought a lesbian Cinderella would already be impossible to publish. Anyway, it's fabulous, and the ending is so moving. Highly recommend.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel (by Ocean Vuong)

This is a Tournament of Books 2020 entry, and I know a lot of big fans of this novel. (I believe this is a roman a clef, or at least in reading about Vuong's life, it seems like it.) It's stunningly written, but I was trying to figure out why I didn't love love it, and then I saw Roxane Gay's comment that it needed more plot, and I totally agree. I can understand why it's so beloved, for sure.

Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today’s Top Comedy Writers (by Mike Sacks)

This was for no category of anything and actually was maybe my favorite of these books, to my surprise! It's interviews and snippets of advice from comedy writers, but it's impressive in both its breadth and its depth. The interviews are well-researched and candid, and it covers ground from Ethel and Albert to Cheers to The Onion. I thought the interview with George Saunders was particularly brilliant, and I didn't even know Saunders wrote humor! Really fabulous.

Frankly in Love (by David Yoon)

A really, really great young adult novel, which reminded me of John Green a bit in terms of how grounded and specific it is.

Frank is the son of Korean immigrants, and as the daughter of Dutch immigrants, this resonated with me in many ways. He's trying to navigate through his senior year of high school with his best friend, and as the title suggests, falls in love along the way. The romance is handled wonderfully too.

People have been raving about this novel and with good reason. Young adult fans, it is a must.

Unorthodox (by Deborah Feldman)

At first I worried I'd already read this, a memoir of a woman who left Hasidic life, but then realized I was thinking of a different book about a different Hasidic sect that I read for a different Read Harder year, Uncovered by Leah Lax.

For me, Unorthodox spent too much time focusing on childhood and not enough on adulthood. Of course once I did the math I realized Feldman was still pretty young, she wrote the memoir at age 26. Bu the time she got married, she already had one foot out the door. Ultimately I preferred Uncovered,  but I still found Unorthodox interesting and was wholeheartedly rooting for Deborah Feldman!

We Cast a Shadow (by Maurice Carlos Ruffin)

A satire of racist American culture, somewhat in the vein of The Sellout. I feel uniquely unqualified to "review" this, so I will direct you to Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's piece in the New York Times, which captures the book well. I found it extremely thought provoking and discomfiting (in a good way; white people should definitely be discomfited by this book. Another solid pick from the Tournament of Books this year!

Birthday (by Meredith Russo)

When I found out that Meredith Russo had another book out, I was excited to read it! She is the transgender author of If I Was Your Girl, a book with a unique perspective that I really enjoyed. 

This book is about two best friends, Eric and Morgan, from a small town in Tennessee, one of whom is questioning their gender. Russo is great at building up the emotion and the premise is powerful. The pain of being trans has rarely come across to me so viscerally.  But I found the climax of the novel too far-fetched. (Spoilers below.)

I get that Eric was attracted to Morgan and somehow sensed that she was a girl all along (I will take it from Russo that this is plausible) but his immediate transition to using the correct pronouns and being all-in physically seemed way too abrupt for me. Would there really be no adjustment necessary? None? At all? The novel went from realistic to wish-fulfillment fantasy in about one sentence, and it took me out of it.

Ultimately this was too flawed for me, but I can see how powerful it would be for a young transgender adult to read, or anyone who doesn't understand what drives trans youth to suicide, and I hope it is very successful in finding its audience.

Year-End Book Wrapup 2019

My goal this year was to read 70 books and to complete the Read Harder Challenge. Achieved! You can see all my Challenge books on last-year’s wrapup post.

This year, I read 93 books: 65 by women, 26 by men, one by a nonbinary author, and one by a “xenofeminist collective.” I also added a fifth California library (San Bernardino) to my list, but honestly the Los Angeles Public Library is the best one. If you're a California resident who is ever in the Los Angeles area, and you check out ebooks, pick up a library card.

Top five books of the year:

1. Sounds like Titanic

I have tried to evangelize this book to everyone I know, yet somehow have not succeeded! It is amazing. A fantastic story, so well-written. Absolutely fell in love with this one.

2. Circe

In sharp contrast to Sounds Like Titanic, I feel like everyone I know has read and loved this one! And if you haven’t you should. An erudite, feminist, and oh-so-satisfying retelling of a familiar Greek myth. Song of Achilles is also very good, but Circe is a masterpiece.

3. The Great Believers

This one is very personal for me, as it strongly echoes the life of my biological mother in the 1980s. I have never met or spoken to her, but I’ve read some of her correspondence, and she lost many very close friends due to AIDS. This book is highly acclaimed and I do recommend it, but acknowledge I have personal reasons for appreciating it as much as I do!

4. Optic Nerve

Already the Tournament of Books is so much better than last year’s, when I liked almost nothing. This year I’ve already read a handful that I really like, and discovered Optic Nerve, a wonderful book in vignette form about the meaning of life and the meaning of art. Looking forward to discussing this in the Tournament!

5. Convenience Store Woman

I think this discovery was courtesy of the Read Harder Challenge in the category “A translated book written by and/or translated by a woman” (although Optic Nerve is by an Argentinian woman and would also have qualified). This is a wonderful, quirky novel from Japan about a woman who works at a convenience store and is at one with the life of the store. Fabulous.

Honorable mentions: The Testaments, Stag’s Leap, Looker, Eliza and Her Monsters, The One, Evvie Drake Starts Over, We Are Never Meeting In Real Life, The Bees, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Fleishman Is in Trouble


Bottom three books:

I now give up on books if I don’t like them, for the most part, so slim pickings for bottom of the year.  I'm proud that I manage to do this; for a long time I was a completist and I had to learn that life's too short! Anyway, I have a list of “meh” but only three that I disliked enough to list here:

1. The Xenofeminist Manifesto

This is as pretentious as you might think a book written by a “xenofeminist collective” might be. This was a Read Harder Challenge book and a gift from a loved one, so I stuck with it. But alas, it was dumb.

2. Fall; or, Dodge in Hell  

I loved the premise of this, and then it ended up being so much white male privileged patriarchal bullshit.  This made me mad.

3. The Lifeboat

This one could have been great too, I was waiting for an awesome unreliable narrative twist, but instead it just dragged and was endlessly boring.

Next year my goal once again is to read 70 books and complete the Read Harder Challenge. I secretly want to read 100 since I got so close this year, but that seems like overkill. As usual, I’ll be updating this post as I get through the challenge and use a label on my posts so you can follow along. Any recommendations for these categories are welcome!

Here are the categories:

Total: 24/24

[X] A YA nonfiction book: The Borden Murders
[X] A retelling of a classic of the canon, fairytale, or myth by an author of color: Ash
[X]  A mystery where the victim(s) is not a woman: A Lady's Guide to Etiquette and Murder
[X]  A graphic memoir: Quiet Girl in a Noisy World
[X]  A book about a natural disaster: The Fires of Vesuvius
[X]  A play by an author of color and/or queer author: Yellow Face
[X]  A historical fiction novel not set in WWII:  The Mirror and the Light
[X]  An audiobook of poetry: Gmorning, Gnight
[X]  The LAST book in a series: Sleeping Murder
[X]  A book that takes place in a rural setting: Real Queer America
[X]  A debut novel by a queer author: London Calling
[X]  A memoir by someone from a religious tradition (or lack of religious tradition) that is not your own: Unorthodox
[X]  A food book about a cuisine you’ve never tried before: Meal
[X]  A romance starring a single parent: Midnight in Austenland
[X]  A book about climate change: New York 2140
[X]  A doorstopper (over 500 pages) published after 1950, written by a woman: Midnight Sun
[X]  A sci-fi/fantasy novella (under 120 pages): Story of Your Life
[X]  A picture book with a human main character from a marginalized community Parker Looks Up
[X]  A book by or about a refugee: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
[X]  A middle grade book that doesn’t take place in the U.S. or the UK: The Lacemaker and the Princess
[X]  A book with a main character or protagonist with a disability (fiction or non): Five Feet Apart
[X]  A horror book published by an indie press: Horrorstör
[X]  An edition of a literary magazine (digital or physical): Witness
[X]  A book in any genre by a Native, First Nations, or Indigenous author: Robopocalypse